


Fine

by ilien



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Deathfic, M/M, No Beta, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-04
Updated: 2011-11-04
Packaged: 2017-10-25 17:19:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/272824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilien/pseuds/ilien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is fine. Really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fine

**Author's Note:**

> I really, really had to write it. I have, however, waited long enough to make sure that this has _nothing_ in common with the way it went in the show. So that, you know, we could be sure that it really never happened. I’ve also got a sort-of-fix for it planned, because I’m not a big fan of deathfics actually.

Dean is fine, really. Probably the Winchester definition of “fine” is not too close to the human one, but what the hell. Castiel isn’t fine at all, because he’s, supposedly, dead. Sammy isn’t fine, because he’s having Hell flashbacks and hasn’t slept for days, except for when he’s out of it with pain. Dean – Dean is fine. He’s alive, not spending twenty-three hours a day screaming from pain, and he’s, unlike some others, is quite functional. He’s fine.

He keeps busy: looks after Sam, helps Bobby around the house and fixes the Impala. There’s no time to sulk, and seriously – when did sulking ever help anything? His days are full of work-that-can-be-done, and his nights aren’t really sleepless: he makes sure to get deadly tired by the end of each day, just enough to fall asleep without thinking too much – not about Sam, not about Castiel’s death, not about the newest end-of-the-world creatures. But every night, every single night, on the edge of sleep, he catches himself thinking that this would be the night. That he’ll fall asleep and see Castiel, who somehow managed to avoid death and is now using his angel mojo to talk to Dean, just like he used to. He imagines everything he would say, certainly starting with “You sure took your time.” It’s not even hope – it’s expectation. He’s almost sure that sooner or later Cas will show up, it’s not a question of “if”.

But his sleep is dreamless, every-fucking-single-night.

As days go by, his baby‘s getting better. His brother isn’t. He wishes he could fix Sammy just like he fixes the Impala, but nothing he does seems to work. As nights go by, he starts realizing that Castiel is not coming back this time. But he, Dean, is not the one who’s hallucinating Lucifer, and he’s not the one who’s dead. He’s fine.

He’s fine, when they find that lead on the Leviathans, and when he leaves Sam with Bobby and goes to check it out. He’s fine, when Bobby leaves Sam alone to help his friend in the hospital. He’s fine – right until he’s a minute too late, and finds Sammy dead in that warehouse. He heard the shot just as he left the car – he was exactly one minute too late.

He saults and burns Sammy’s body – yeah, he remembers that Sammy never did that to him, but he can’t let the leviathans touch his brother – that’s probably the one thing worse than going back to the Pit.

He doesn’t come back to Bobby’s for a while, and when he does so, after several days – he finds the house burned to the ground. Bobby’s phone is switched off. No one ever hears from Bobby after that.

He takes the Impala and keeps hunting. The Leviathans are out there somewhere, but they don’t show themselves, so he hunts the usual stuff – vampires, ghosts, shapeshifters – just like the good old times. He doesn’t let himself think too much, and no, no, he’s totally not looking into that emptiness in his life where his brother and his friends used to be. He survived his brother’s death once, he tells himself he can do it again.

He goes to see Lisa, just to make sure she’s well – she even recognizes him. The guy who hit them. She’s okay, Ben is okay, and when Dean leaves the town, he’s almost content: the only people alive he still cares about are happy.

He finds another hunt, north-west of Chicago, but someone beats him there: by the time he gets to the grave, the bones have been freshly dug and burned. It’s not the first time, but it somehow makes him feel useless: there are lots of hunters in the world, and Dad’s “if we don’t do it, people die” doesn’t really seem to apply. He wonders why he’d never noticed it when Sammy was around.

That night is the night when he finally dreams and sees Castiel. They’re in the warehouse, the one where Dean summoned the angel the very first time. The walls are covered with sigils, and the parody for an altar he and Bobby built for the ritual is still there. Cas is there, too – just like Dean remembers him: the trenchcoat, the tie, the impossibly blue eyes. They talk – Dean can’t remember what about – and Cas keeps saying “I’m sorry” and telling him to have faith. “Just pray to me” Dean hears right before he wakes up “And I’ll be there.”

Dean wakes up at the backseat of Impala, washes his face with bottled water and starts praying: first half-heartedly, like he used to pray to Cas before, and then, when it doesn’t work – he kneels, bows his head and says a real prayer. It does not work either.

That’s when the realization hits him. It was just a dream. Fucking stupid dream. Castiel is dead, he’s not coming back.

And that’s when it gets to him: it’s too much. He knows that when he dies he’ll go back to Hell, no other way for him, not any more – but there’s one thing he knows for sure about Hell. When you’re there, you don’t dream. And don’t wake up.

He thinks about all the times he’d left a note: when he was going to say “yes” to Michael, when he was going to see Death, and that one time when he was fourteen, Sammy wasn’t talking to him because of some silly argument and Dad was drunk, again. He has no one to leave a note for, and that’s liberating: he doesn’t owe anything to anyone in this world. No one is going to beat him in an alley for considering it, no one is going to cry all night after noticing what Dean’s writing.

So he just pulls the trigger.


End file.
